Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Ever feel like you just can't create a card today, no matter what? Maybe it's brain freeze or something, but whatever it is, you want to create a card, but your brain and hands are in alternate universes. So, what do you do (besides give up and go make cookies)?

How about trying a greeting card kit? As the kids would say, "whas'at?". A greeting card kit is just that, a kit. All the papers, ribbons, buttons, brads, flowers and bling come in one kit, enough to make 4 to 8 cards, depending on the kit . You cut or punch out, ink and paste up. Simple as pie, right? Well, actually, no, not so simple. I've done kits where I can do the cards in a minute or less; other's take an hour or more. But it is so much FUN and really gets my creative juices going again. Remember that tri-fold Valentine's Day Card I did for the House Mouse challenge this past weekend? Where do you think I got the design idea -- a card kit of course. This has become one of my favorite card layouts. The trick is having the coordinated paper to put it all together! The brain child (that I know of) for this layout is Pinecone Press Options kits. I've done several of their kits the past few years and have enjoyed them thoroughly. My favorite is Once Upon a Springtime (shown below) which I completed during our January snow storm.

Aren't these gorgeous!!

The bottom photo is the inside of the tri-fold card photo above it. There were a couple more cards in the kit that are not shown here. Pinecone Press Options Kits website is http://www.pineconepressdesign.com/main.cfm?categoryoid=13 Unfortunately, they are a pain to deal with, so if you can, order your kits through your local scrapbooking store. (I hate to say that about ANY retailer, but they never sent me one item on my order or refunded the money for it; I got everything else on my order without any problems.)

Options has a variety of kits. They are Options for a reason -- you can do a set of greeting cards or any of the several projects in the kit. Well worth the money.

Another kit I've done recently is from TJ Designs by TweetyJill:

These Valentine's tags were fun to do. Lots of cutting out, inking, rubber stamping, and put it all together for an attractive tag. They supplied everything except the rubber stamps and ink.

.....Had to take a break as I received a long distance, lengthy call from a friend in Belgium, so now time to get back to this.....

When doing TweetyJill kits, they encourage you to use their rubber stamp sets on their tags and cards. Since I do not have all their rubber stamp sets, I substituted some of my own. Still turned out some great looking tags! You can find TweetyJill at http://www.tweetyjill.com/productcart/pc/viewcategories.asp

Tomorrow, I hope to get some cards done and will post when I can. Catch you later!